World View is a leading global stratospheric exploration company that flies stratospheric balloons at altitudes as high as 100,000 feet for remote sensing, imaging, navigation, and data gathering applications. At the maximum height, a sensor in the balloon has a line of sight extending out on a radius of 388 miles and could cover an area of over 470,000 square miles. Infleqtion is teaming up with World View to understand how Infleqtion’s quantum based sensors could be used in such an environment. They will be working together to demonstrate how Infleqtion’s cold atom based quantum sensor products, such as their precision timing and ultrasensitive RF sensors, can be used in applications for the defense and commercial markets. The aim of these initial tests is to demonstrate the usefulness of using the two companies’ technologies together so that they can convince prospective customers to look at using the quantum sensor and stratospheric balloon technologies together to provide advantages in a customer’s commercial application.
One of the things that is overlooked by many quantum industry observers is that quantum sensors are already providing quantum advantage in certain applications and will likely generate more production revenue in the near term than quantum computing. Quantum computing gets more attention from the media today as it will probably be a larger market over the long term, but it may take 10 or 20 years for this to happen . Unlike most of the other quantum tech players, Infleqtion’s product strategy recognizes this and the company participates in the quantum sensing, quantum communications, quantum computing, and quantum components markets to provide the company with a more diverse revenue stream.
Additional information on the collaboration between Infleqtion and World View to investigate high altitude quantum sensing can be found in a news release posted on the Infleqtion web site here.
January 26, 2023